31 December 2008

the audacity of some blessed Hope (for the new year)

I leant upon a coppice gateWhen Frost was spectre-gray,And Winter's dregs made desolateThe weakening eye of day.The tangled bine-stems scored the skyLike strings of broken lyres,And all mankind that haunted nighHad sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to beThe Century's corpse outleant,His crypt the cloudy canopy,The wind his death-lament.The ancient pulse of germ and birthWas shrunken hard and dry,And every spirit upon earthSeemed fervourless as I.

So little cause for carolingsOf such ecstatic soundWas written on terrestrial thingsAfar or nigh around,That I could think there trembled throughHis happy good-night airSome blessed Hope, whereof he knewAnd I was unaware.

Thomas Hardy wrote, or at least dated, that poem 31 December 1900, to mark the beginning of the twentieth century. And that turned out OK, didn't it? Oh, right . . . um, well . . . .